Peninsula Avionics

I interviewed numerous avionics shops throughout California and Oregon for my entire panel Garmin upgrade and decided to go with Art at peninsula Avionics. The job was just completed ahead of schedule and on budget. Not to mention his work is meticulous. One other point I appreciated about Art is that he his extremely responsive and easy to get a hold of, which makes the job a lot less stressful. It was pleasure to work with Art!

Over the last few months in 2015 Peninsula Avionics did two major installations two of my planes. I was delighted, everything — and I mean EVERYTHING — of these complex installations worked without a glitch. This is just amazing — I’ve been owning planes for 30 years and that just doesn’t happen, I thought!
First plane is my Bonanza A36. He installed a GTN750, a Connexts Flightstream 210, a GDL88 ADS-​B in/​out, a Garmin 327 Transponder, a new indicator and upgraded a few other small items, such as remote channeling for my DME etc. As you see, this is major surgery.
The second plane he upgraded is my Cessna 172. It received a Garmin 530 (removed from the A36), a GDL88, a Flightstrea 210 and a new Garmin indicator to work with the 530.
As I said, everything worked right off the bat! Also, after flying now for awhile with ADS-​B, I wouldn’t want to fly around the bay area anymore without its traffic screen. The amount of traffic you see is stunning. Note that the ADS-​B also shows me planes which don’t have their own ADS-​B out, as long as ATC sees the on radar. So it is already tremendously useful.
Since the planes have connext, I usually leave the nav maps on the 530 or GTN 740 screens and watch the traffic on an iPAD. My finance, who is a bit nervous about midairs, absolutely loves holding the ipad in her lap and watching for ADS-​B traffic and then try to acquire it visually, which is very hard. Winfried

This was my first experience with Peninsula Avionics and I am very happy with the result. My GNS430W receiver was inoperative but I was not sure if it was the unit or the antenna. Art did a thorough bench test and found that the trouble was with the unit, so no need to bring the aircraft to PAO. Art explained everything as he performed the tests. The repair was fast, reasonably priced and he explained that the software should be upgraded as part of the repair. He also pointed out that the companion GNS530W should be updated to be sure that cross fill would operate properly. It all went smoothly. I’ll be back the next time I have any need for avionics purchase or service.

My king 155 was having display problems, I researched on the internet and ordered a new display but when I installed the new one I had even more display elements missing and intermittent. I noticed that the display socket fingers had lost their spring tension and we’re not making good contact I called several avionics shops and was told that this is a very expensive repair. I was goggling avionics shops and noticed quite a few excellent reviews of Peninsula Avionics on a pilot’s chat room. I called Art and he said he might have some tricks for getting better contact to the display. So I sent him the radio I was totally prepared for a very expensive repair but he sent it back to me with a note that he got almost all of the digits completely working to a point that you could always read all the numbers. He said because it wasn’t completely fixed he wasn’t charging me anything for it (not even shipping it back) and that if I wanted to pursue that option of completely fixing it, it would cost about $ 2000.
I will definitely take any of my avionics work to him in the future and highly recommend him to others.

Went in for a transponder check and was told the transponder was fried. So I ordered a new one and had this shop install it. When I went to pick up the plane, I asked for my old part. This company reluctantly gave my old part back then decided they wanted to charge me an extra $ 100 because of that. I just wanted to get away from them so I paid it. A week later I did some research and found out Peninsula avionics sells your old parts on ebay after he fixes them. I now go to sterling aviation in concord where the guys are honest.

Flew in Tuesday with an autopilot problem… always difficult to diagnose. Art’s shop had just closed so I left the plane and a voice message. The next morning I call and he had already found the problem… a burned out servo. By Friday he had found a replacement and had it in, checked out, and working. I was back in business for a Saturday trip. Thanks for a job well done.

I just spent a very pleasant morning finally (seriously, FINALLY!) fixing the transceiver problem in my plane! After a year of futzing with this and that — including shipping my radio off to a «expert» shop in Tuscon, and only to be told then that it was shot and that I should just buy a new one (from them) — I found Art at Peninsula Avionics. I went in and asked about getting a new radio installed and Art said, «let’s find out if your radio is actually bad first ’cause there are other things less obvious that can cause transmit problems». Art proceeded to bench test the radio (hot and cold) all freqs transmit power and squelch, and pronounced it ‘fine — no problems’ !! He then proceeded to check the antenna lead at the fuselage and BAMMMM! There it was! Corrosion in plane (sic) sight! A new lead, some clean-​up, and I’m back looking for that $ 100 hamburger joint. The upshot is that owning a plane can be such a pain but with Art at PA at KPAO around that pain just isn’t quite as daunting as it was 2 days ago. Of course, the wife thinks I’m at Safeway…